


Kiss by Candlelight

by holbytlanna



Series: Advent Calendar 2020 [2]
Category: MacGyver (TV 2016)
Genre: Burns, Gen, Giving Mac shit, I am not a doctor, Jill Cage and Leanna are just mentioned, Mild Hurt/Comfort, No Romance, OC, Star Wars arguements, Team as Family, but they're there
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-11
Updated: 2020-12-11
Packaged: 2021-03-11 01:48:45
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,347
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28007226
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/holbytlanna/pseuds/holbytlanna
Summary: Candles | Burns | Fear of FireA little holiday get-together gets interesting when there are too many candles involved.
Series: Advent Calendar 2020 [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2042773
Comments: 4
Kudos: 16





	Kiss by Candlelight

**Author's Note:**

> Despite the title of the Advent Calendar challenge for December 4-6 (yes, I'm so behind, I know) being "Kiss by Candlelight," there is no kissing, no romance of any kind.   
> I do, however, include the doctor character I introduced in my Whumptober, Deanna Reiss. I wanted to include all three of the prompt words, but I didn't think any of the characters are really afraid of fire. So I gave it to Deanna.
> 
> The Star Wars argument was inspired by the cold open of 2x07, where Mac and Jack argue about whether or not Ewoks eat people. I hate to disagree with Mac, because he's smarter than I will ever be, but he's totally wrong when it comes to this.
> 
> As always, questions, comments, concerns, rude remarks? Let me know!

The number of times Deanna Reiss had patched up Mac and Jack was bordering on ridiculous. Jack had called her out once for always being the one to deal with them. It wasn’t that he minded, just that “don’t you ever take a day off, Dee? Seems like it’s always you having to stitch us up.”

She had laughed off his concerns, pulling tight Jack’s last stitch on a nasty gash in his arm. She did take her days off, like every other Phoenix doctor. And there were times when the boys (codenamed “double trouble” by med staff) were initially seen to by one of her coworkers. But she had grown fond of both of them, so she always at least checked in. 

Housecalls, however, were new. 

Though technically, it wasn’t a housecall, it was a Christmas party. Deanna had scored an invite to the annual MacGyver-Bozer Christmas party, and she had no plans to miss it. And if she also planned on checking up on Mac’s recently bust-up shoulder and Jack’s stitches, well, she could do that too.

The party was bright, and fun. Bozer was wearing a silly-looking hat with mistletoe hanging from it. He kept walking up to Leanna and pointing up at it, looking hopeful. She obliged him more often than not. Jill, Mac and some guys she recognized as Phoenix lab techs were admiring some of Mac’s ‘MacGyvered’ decorations, including what looked like it had once been a toaster functioning now as a turntable for the hubcap christmas tree. Deanna knew that Director Webber was around somewhere, and she could see Jack and Riley trying to get a fire lit in the terrace firepit while Cage looked on and laughed.

The house was exceedingly festive. She’d been expecting that, especially considering the amount of effort that went into the MacGyver-Bozer haunted house. It seemed like there wasn’t an inch of the house without some tinsel and pine. The smell of pastrami, pine and candle-smoke permeated the house, layering with the quiet Christmas music to create a really fun, festive atmosphere.

The pastrami was delicious. They had champagne, and sat around the firepit, playing games. Girls-vs-boys charades was fun, but “nerds-vs-everyone else” charades (Jack’s words) was even better. All the lab techs, plus Mac, were absolutely awful at charades. It was like watching Sheldon Cooper play pictionary.

All in all, Deanna didn’t think she’d laughed so hard in a long time. 

They were in the middle of watching Jack pretend to be what looked like Chewbacca but apparently wasn’t (“It’s Bigfoot, you guys, c’mon! For once in my life, I  _ wasn’t  _ talking about star Wars!”), when the bistro lights on the terrace went out. All the lights, actually. It wasn’t pitch dark, because of the firepit and the few scattered candles, but it was enough to interrupt the game.

Mac stood up quickly, grabbing a nearby candle. “Don’t worry, guys, I’ve got a generator around here somewhere.” He walked off, and Bozer stoked up the firepit to be even brighter. Deanna shivered, despite the increase in heat.

“Don’t y’all have flashlights in this house, Boze?” Jack asked, as one of the lab guys got up to help Mac.

“Bold of you to assume they aren’t being used as a bunsen burner or something,” Riley laughed at the same time Jill said “We could just use the candles. They aren’t very bright, but the atmosphere would just be so quaint!”

Everyone seemed on board with using candles for The Aesthetic, so Deanna didn’t say anything. 

As Bozer got up, candle in hand, to grab a drink for Leanna, Mac abruptly returned. “Sorry, folks, I may have taken some parts off the generator to-- Ow!”

Deanna jumped up as the shoulder of Mac’s sweater blazed up, lit by the candle Bozer had been holding as they bumped into each other. Jack was immediately at Mac’s side, patting out the small fire, and she could see Mac gritting his teeth in pain, holding his arm gingerly. There was red wax spilled over onto his skin.

“Oh my God, Mac, I’m so sorry!” Bozer was squawking, looking torn between wanting to help and wanting to stay out of the way. 

“I’m ok, I’m alright, Boze. Hardly the first time I’ve been burned,” Mac chuckled.

To say Deanna was not rattled wouldn’t be true, but she was a doctor, and someone was hurt. As often happened, her sense of duty overpowered her other feelings. “Then you’d know you need to have that looked at by a doctor,” she butt in. “Come on, Mac, let’s get you looked at.”

He protested mildly as she led him to the bathroom, foregoing candles to use the much-safer light of the flashlight on Mac’s SAK. 

—————

Deanna led Mac to the bathroom, as he held his SAK flashlight with his left hand. He had had to wave off Jack and the rest of his guests, telling them to keep talking, have fun. 

She pulled the door to, not quite closing it. It might have just been a trick of the shifting shadows, but Mac was surprised by how rattled and distant she looked. 

“I really am alright, Deanna,” he said quietly. “A superficial second degree burn, at the very worst.” She didn’t look all that reassured. Maybe it was the dark that was getting to her, though she didn’t strike Mac as someone to be afraid of the dark. 

“I’ll be the judge of that,” she said with a small smile. She often had to say it to him, as he downplayed whatever injury he had gotten or bug he’d picked up in the field. “Now, off with the sweater.”

Mac frowned. He actually liked the soft, heather-green sweater, and was pretty unhappy that it had been burned. “How’s the damage to it? Any way we could save it?” he asked, not with much hope.

She took the flashlight, turning him to see. She had to stand on her toes, so Mac sat down on the closed lid of the toilet. 

“Thanks. And no. Sorry Mac, but even I can’t stitch that up. Need help getting it off?”

Mac harrumphed softly. “No, I can manage.” He wasn’t sure why he was stalling. It wasn’t cold or anything.

Deanna seemed to pick up on his hesitation. “Mac, I’m an emergency medic. I’ve seen you without a shirt hundreds of times. Three in this past month alone.”

“I know,” he laughed. “I was present.” He shoved aside any awkwardness of being shirtless in his own house with a guest, and shucked the sweater and singed undershirt.

Deanna hissed when she saw his bare shoulder, the same one that she had very recently needed to pop back into socket. “Well, Jack got the fire out quickly enough that the damage isn’t too bad,” she said, wetting a washcloth with cold water from the sink. She laid it over the burn, drawing a hiss from him as it made contact. 

Her hands, rock-solid when performing emergency surgeries, trembled slightly.

Mac frowned. “Are you okay?”

She shrugged him off, wetting another cloth with warm water and soap. “You’re the one hurt here, not me.”

The cinnamon-scented red wax came off pretty easily with gentle scrubbing, but it pulled at the fine blond hair on his arm. He didn’t even know where Bozer had found a cinnamon-scented candle, because Mac was sure he had never bought one in his life. 

“Your hands are shaking, Deanna.” She stilled them over his arm, tensing up for a moment before going back to her work, not meeting his eyes. Mac continued, determined to find out what had so shaken the previously unshakeable doctor. “Is it something about the party, someone…?”

“No!” she said quickly. “No, Mac, the party’s been great. Everything’s been wonderful.” She trailed off, grey eyes going a little distant as she laid the now-cold washcloth over his forearm to ease the lingering pain. “It’s just… I’ve never done well with fire. I’ve been afraid of it ever since I was a kid.”

“Oh,” Mac said softly. Now that he thought back, actually, he did remember Deanna sitting further away from the firepit than most of the others. He hadn’t thought anything of it at the time. “I’m sorry, I didn’t know.”

She chuckled at that, a little drily. “No, you wouldn’t. I don’t make a point of telling people. It isn’t usually a problem. I only ever see the aftermath,” she said, gesturing to Mac’s burns with her hands full of gauzy bandaging. 

“Still. I don’t want you to feel afraid here.”

Deanna began cutting strips of the gauze to lay over his forearm, talking as she did so. She usually did talk while fixing people up, telling them what she was doing. “I’m not afraid. Firepits and fireplaces are fine. Even candles. They’re alright. And you know I can deal with burns.” He had to smile at that, because it seemed just about every other month he was going in with burns of every nature. It came with specialising in explosives. And being unable to cook.

She went on. It seemed to Mac like she was trying to justify something, to him or maybe to herself. “I’ve had dreams about fire ever since I was little. Maybe four or five. The house is burning down, and I don’t have time to grab something important. Or someone’s still inside.” Another dry chuckle. “It got to the point where I packed a bag, just in case I needed to make a quick exit. But there’s no reason for those dreams. No trauma, no bad fire-related memories. My brain just thought the medical field didn’t have enough nightmare-fuel for me, I guess.” 

As she finished up his forearm and moved to tend his shoulder, Mac looked down at his hands. “Phobias aren’t often rational,” he stated, wondering if his current train of thought wouldn’t do more harm than good. “And neither are dreams. And sometimes the two aren’t even related at all. I’m terrified of heights, but I’ve never had a dream about it that wasn’t based in memory. Not like yours that your brain just makes up.” He hissed as she touched a particularly sensitive part of his injury (“sorry, sorry,” she murmured, focusing). “But pyrophobia’s a very rational fear, because fire is dangerous. What I’m saying is, there’s nothing wrong with you being afraid of fire.”

“I know,” she said as she finished with his shoulder. “I know, and I’m alright. I was just a bit startled by it. You’re the one who got hurt.” She used the flashlight to look him over one last time. “But other than that, you look okay. Let’s get you another shirt, and get you back to your party, yeah?”

Mac could tell she was trying to shift the subject, and he let it slide. He didn’t like talking about his own fears either. So he grabbed a clean shirt, and made a quick stop to the garage before heading back onto the back porch.

Jack was talking loudly. “Now, you know how I don’t usually like to disagree with Mac, he’s usually right, but this? This was just taking it way too far. Ewoks eat people. One-hundred percent. They were gonna cook Han and company, and eat them!”

“Alright, alright, let’s say that you’re right. What’s your justification?” That was Eli, one of Jill’s colleagues in Forensics. “I mean, you never actually  _ see  _ the Ewoks eating people.”

“Maybe cooking people isn’t a great topic after I just got set on fire?” Mac interjected, sitting down. In all honesty, if it hadn’t been for the conversation he and Deanna had just had, Mac would have jumped into the argument and defended his opinion that Ewoks did not, in fact, have any intention of eating the heroes of the galaxy. But he figured that the subject might be problematic for Deanna, and didn’t want to trigger her pyrophobia any more than it already had been.

But to his surprise, she jumped right into the debate. “You don’t see them eating people because it’s a PG movie. But you remember the Ewoks banging on Stormtrooper helmets?”

The peanut gallery of nerds nodded their heads. 

“What did they do with the bodies? You don’t see any bodies at all, even though the forest should be littered with them. Lots of cultures historically ate the flesh of enemy warriors as a show of strength.” The flickering of the firepit made her face look like she was telling a ghost story. “And what kind of ‘we just helped save the entire galaxy’ celebration isn’t going to be a feast? They totally ate Stormtrooper.”

Jack was nodding enthusiastically. “See, Mac, someone around here has some sense. Up top, gimme some,” he said, holding out a hand for a high five. Deanna smirked and obliged.

“Alright, alright,  _ maybe  _ they ate Stormtrooper. But that doesn’t mean they were going to eat Luke and Han, they were gonna sacrifice them to C-3PO.” There were very few Star Wars battlefields Mac was willing to die on. This wasn’t necessarily one of them, but it came pretty close. 

Riley, who had stayed out of the debate thus far, chimed in “Yeah, but you can definitely eat something after you’ve roasted it. They could have planned to feed them to ‘3PO.”

Mac was losing ground. His whole audience was against him. He had to act fast. “You know what, as someone recently almost barbequed, I say we change the subject.” He rattled the package of small camping flashlights he had gotten from the garage. “What’s say we put the candles away and use some non-flammable lighting?”

They passed around the lights, blowing out the candles. The relief on Deanna’s face was momentary, and if Mac hadn’t known the truth, he would have said it was just a trick of the lighting. But he did know. She smiled at him, a silent “thank you for understanding.”

Thus the party passed, in near-darkness and nerd-banter. Good food, good friends, and medical accidents. Just your typical Phoenix Christmas.


End file.
